


Birthday (1970)

by ledbythreads



Series: Heart in your hand [5]
Category: Led Zeppelin
Genre: 1970, Albert Hall, Angst, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Band Fic, Canon Compliant, Canon Era, Charlotte Martin (mentioned), Complicated Relationships, Established Relationship, M/M, Maureen Plant (mentioned), One True Pairing, POV Robert, RPF, RPS - Freeform, Smut, True Love, Wailly Wailly Wailly, no happy ending YET, on tour, that necklace
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-07
Updated: 2019-10-07
Packaged: 2020-11-26 20:37:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20936387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ledbythreads/pseuds/ledbythreads
Summary: Robert and Jimmy are lovers but life, especially back in England, is complicated. Robert has a wife and child but Jimmy feels alone. What does this mean for our star crossed ship of fools? At their triumphant homecoming gig on Jimmy’s birthday he meets Charlotte Martin and begins a relationship that will last longer than Zeppelin. Told from Robert’s POVhey, but Bron-Yr-Aur is coming right... hold onto your timelines.





	Birthday (1970)

He slips into Jimmy’s bed like water, flows round him. Jimmy half wakes.

“Hello baby...”

Robert has his fingers in Jimmy’s mouth the way he knows Jimmy loves. Has his face pressed to Jimmy’s hair. Holding him close against him. Feels Jimmy go slack against him in surrender. Robert still never knows which way this thing, this loving, between them will go.

“Happy birthday Jimmylove”

Runs his wet fingers down the groove of Jimmy’s chest, across the cup of his navel, into the dark hair of his crotch, twining in the root of him.

“Want you, Jimmy, want you, missed you...”

“Always baby, you know that”

Robert feels the impossible tension of weeks and days and hours of waiting. He almost can’t get hard from the weight of it all. Just wants Jimmy to hold him, teach him, move him. But Robert has learned Jimmy more often now needs Robert to be strong for him instead.

It’s so much more complicated back in England. Birmingham, now Bristol, London tonight.

The familiar accents, everything being smaller, the incredible circus of the recent US tours folded away. Back to family. Robert loves his family more than life itself, would do anything for Maureen and little Carmen, anything. Robert runs his palm across Jimmy’s chest, feels his heart beating faster now. Anything, doesn’t need to cut him off from loving other people, does it? Jimmy doesn’t have anyone else. Jimmy is family too. His Jimmylove. His mate.

“Where’ve you gone baby?”

“Right here Jimmymate, I’m right here”

“Sometimes I get lonely... Robert” 

“We’re all right here Pagey, everyone is”

“I don’t mean being alone baby, I don’t mean that, but all of you have someone, have kids”

Robert knows Jimmy doesn’t count any of the girls as ‘someone’. Robert doesn’t know why Jimmy purposefully picks all these girls that can’t get anywhere near him. Robert doesn’t understand half of what Jimmy does.

“I’m right here Jimmy”

“Robert, I love you”

Robert’s chest feels like it might cave in, feels like he’s been kicked in the stomach. He knows Jimmy is testing him. It’s like a spell they have, an enchantment, that Robert will break if he ever says ‘I love you’. If he looks back he will lose Jimmy forever.

“I’ve got you, it’s ok Pagey, it’s ok”

Robert holds Jimmy tightly with his arms crossed over Jimmy’s own, across his chest, pinning him still and helpless. Robert knows Jimmy can feel his tears in Jimmy’s hair. Knows Jimmy can feel him shaking as he cries silently in the dark. This English winter morning.

“You’re my sun baby”

“The same sun wherever we are. I remember. Every day Jimmylove”

“Can you make me feel your light baby? I want you golden, shine for me baby”

“Jimmy... I uh... don’t know if I can”

Jimmy turns in his arms. Kisses him. Tastes the salt on his lips.

Robert feels Jimmy’s tongue, Jimmy’s breath, like the sun rising on the Yule morning. Relief floods him. Robert feels for Jimmy’s erection, holds his hand against Jimmy as he rises. He loves him loves him loves him so much.

“Fuck me between my thighs baby, hold me”

Robert hadn’t even known you could do this until Jimmy had shown him in a book about ancient Greece. Jimmy likes to feel him be wild but he can’t always cope with that if Robert is inside him. Robert spits into his hand and slicks his cock. Presses into the groove where Jimmy’s thighs come together. Feels Jimmy slip his hand down to feel his own balls and the thrust of Robert against him. Robert re-wraps both arms round Jimmy, straight-jacketing them together. As he starts to ride Jimmy harder Robert feels Jimmy go softer and softer in his body as he melts against Robert and moans.

Jimmy is shy about his voice and won’t often sing with Robert, but when they are like this, and Jimmy forgets himself, they harmonise. Robert starts to feel it, that light, that swagger, that heat. He forgets where they are, who they are, just feels this man, his man, his mate, his lover - taking everything he needs, giving everything he can, until they are both far beyond words.

* * *

Robert forgets the cameras from the beginning but there is something else that is special about tonight. He can feel all four of them together making a magic that goes right down into the roots of England. The crowd are their homecoming, their triumph. Everything in their music is perfect in how it breaks and mends, how it comes together with tension and release. Everything they have worked to become. It’s Jimmy’s birth day and this is Zeppelin giving birth to a new music, a new decade, a new era. Robert feels like he is intimately webbed to each of them, protected by John, moved by Jonesy, ridden by Jimmy.

The crowd are like a strange sea he could step into. They call to him before he finishes calling to them. They finish his song before it leaves him. They sway like the tide, like an undertow. Robert is illuminated, he feels adored, feels Jimmy watching him, and sees the sea of faces seeing him as Jimmy wants them to be seen. He is hero and goddess, warrior and child. The new sun rising until he is too beautiful to look at. He feels the gold coin round his neck and Jimmy’s love. He sings it all, everything he feels, everything said and unsaid.

* * *

He sees Jimmy see her and it happens.

Robert feels something pull his threads and he looks round like maybe someone from the future has called his name. Daltry is with a tall woman who looks like Jimmy if Jimmy were blonde. She looks like Athena in one of Jimmy’s art books, Athena painted by Rossetti of course. Robert feels something in the fabric of his life gently rip apart as he watches Jimmy fall in love at first sight.

It is like a shimmer, something about the way Jimmy moves, or the way he is listening. Something Robert can see only because he knows what Jimmy looks like when he is utterly disarmed. Robert knows with certainty that this woman, Charlotte he thinks her name is, has seen right through Jimmy, and that Jimmy has let her.

And so Robert watches while continuing to be completely charming as person after person seeks him out. Robert holds court and finds that people will accept his stage face, that they cannot see he is bleeding. All he has to do is take drink after drink and look deeply into their eyes. All he has to do is move his hands a certain way, or use a certain tone of voice, and nobody can see his heart breaking.

Eventually Robert sees Jimmy signal to Cole and they are leaving. Jimmy and Charlotte are they. And Jimmy looks over and all Robert can do is make sure Jimmy sees his blessing as they smile goodbye. And then finally, finally, he can be alone. When Maureen finds him Robert is slumped speechless at the side of the bed as though in prayer. And she unwinds the silk scarf from round his hands, not knowing it is Jimmy’s, in the same matter of fact way she takes off his boots. The rest she figures he can do for himself. Tomorrow is a new day.

**Author's Note:**

> The gig is 9th January 1970 at the Royal Albert Hall London. You can watch it on youtube because it was recorded but not put out till many years later due to technical issues. I think it’s absolutely astonishing.  
JP met Charlotte Martin on this day, his 26th birthday and they stayed together till 1983 and had a daughter, Scarlet Lilith Eleida Page, together. 
> 
> Maureen Plant / Wilson and Charlotte Martin are not really people with a canon ‘performance’ so please be extra careful to remember everyone is a character and this is fiction - but without wives and lovers the creation of IRL Zeppelin would not have been possible so respect due. 
> 
> I photosynthesise these stories from kudos and comments so I love it when you tell me what you think and turn it into more writing. You can also find me on tumblr or email me (see my profile) x lbt


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